


into the Great Laugh of Mankind

by badtroll



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Character Study, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Turtle (IT) CAN Help Us
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-28 23:30:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20786855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badtroll/pseuds/badtroll
Summary: When Richie can’t make himself leave Derry behind, he revisits his old home, sets up to live quietly and hopefully forgotten. Until Eddie shows up on his front porch, missing an arm— and very not-dead.fix it fic, where Eddie doesn’t die, and I beat up Stephen king





	into the Great Laugh of Mankind

**Author's Note:**

> I’m writing this because the scene where their hands all healed felt weirdly insignificant— so i’m gonna make it significant!! 
> 
> This fix is mostly magical realism and honestly just a nice set up for me to treat these two sweetly. that being said— a lot of this fic covers ptsd, possible instances of self-harm, and general trauma recovery! so step lightly and don’t read anything you know will make you upset!

On the way back to Derry, Richie bought two packs of cigarettes and a red Seven-Eleven slushie. The road back up from New York state felt like one very long joke, and the beaver mural rising up over the hill was the worst punchline he’d ever heard. The only person he’d actually told, about this shit idea, was Beverly— she’d been really quiet about it before asking why. Knowing there wouldn’t be anything for him there. She never raised her voice though, and he spent most of the phone call wondering if she’d ask to come along. Something in her tone, she must have missed it too.

The synth baseline of _I Wanna Dance with Somebody_ started up just as he pulled off on Main street. His hand flailed out and he smacked at the radio before it turned off, frazzled. Richie thunked his head against the steering wheel and laughed, rattling into a cough. This was silly. The only comfort was knowing at least that.

Turning off the ignition, the car let out a sad clunk. “What, the drive up was fine, but we get here, and you get upset?” he scolded the worn leather of the dash and sighed.

The two front pockets on his flannel held two packs of Pall Mall reds, weighing down his shirt in A Way. He didn’t tell Bev he’d started smoking again, she wouldn’t have said anything against him, but he knew it wasn’t exactly a _good_ development.

It'd only been a week or so since he was last here, but it still felt like an old childhood memory. As if the air of Derry was far away. Something about fearing for your life through childhood didn’t leave you with many good associations. Forgetting it in pieces at least made it easy at a glance. Part of coming back was hoping things would come back— memories, anything.

The drive here had been the easy part of the journey. Telling his agent that he was selling his fucking house and moving across the country— not so much. But she helped him none the less, before sending him off with the threat of ugly Christmas cards if he didn’t keep in touch.

He must have taken three trips back and forth from his apartment to the goodwill. He had too many fucking shirts, but everything else was easy to parse out. Most of it had been furniture he’d taken from his parents house (without asking) and books he should have accepted he wasn’t going to read years ago. Personal help books, that was a whole period.

Something about not being able to write his own jokes made him really resent being funny for money— and California very briefly had him believing yoga would make him feel better about it (he wasn't _not able _to write his own material per say, but his manager had advised him against it). It was funnier than anything, he told himself. It was funny.

Parking in front of the theater, Richie walked down the street, tunneling his vision to the shop on the end. Some sort of antique shop, where the apartment above it hadn’t been occupied since the nineties.

He’d always wanted to live over a shop as a kid. Used to dream about hiding out in the theater and living in the attic. One time, Bill and he snuck up there when they were thirteen and it was unremarkable. Didn’t stop him from dreaming about it. They'd laughed about how much Eddie would've hated it.

Richie tripped over his feet when the memory of hiding from Bower’s and his gang in a department store smacked him in the head. How did he forget hiding in Freese’s till after hours? Richie shook his head, like the thought would fall out his ears— nothing about the amnesia made sense, but hopefully, if he rolled with it, he’d get some nice ones back. Like sneaking into the theater, and Bills warm red hair when it first started parting over his eyes.

Richie pushed open the creaky door of the shop, littered with tall shelves stuffed with all manner of shit from the '50s. It was like someone just decided to sell everything out of their house when it went out of style. Along with a number of racist chachkies, antique shops were always full of racist bullshit.

“We’re closed!” a voice called from the doorway behind the pay counter. She didn’t come out so much as shove her head out the door gap.

Somehow, he recognized her, she didn’t recognize him luckily— but the fear was still there. He expected to start living here again but didn’t want anyone to know. Like a ghost, haunting out an apartment cause he’s apparently too delusional to live outside of this town. He’d managed to forget about it for almost thirty years and a traumatic _clown_ experience made him come crawling back?

“Ah— no I’m here for the apartment,” he pointed up, “Richie? I called you—”

“Oh, I know who you are, hush,” she grumbled something about speed talking kids and shoved her hand noisily in a drawer in the desk. Apparently full of keys and marbles, from the sound, normal stuff. She all but threw the key at him, and he rushed forward to catch it.

Going from California, to here, where his new landlord didn’t even want to ID him before throwing him the keys. He wasn’t gonna punch a gift horse in the face. 

“The door sticks, you gotta put your shoulder into it,” she shouted, louder than necessary, over her shoulder before going back through the door. “You break anything, you fix it!” he heard through the wood.

Richie stood in the dusty room alone, and _then_ nodded—the bell over the door following him out. The sun had just started to set, and a cool autumn breeze blew down the street. His hair was just getting long enough that it brushed his shoulders. The view down the street was quiet, his car the only bright shock of color. He was the only person out on the street; Derry, population: just Richie.

The apartment door, to the right of the shop, was a deep red and the paint chipped away from his shins, down.

There was a fourteen sun bleached into the wood where it used to have a number plate. Richie breathed in and held it for a second before sticking the key in the deadbolt above the knob and shouldered his way in and up the stairs. They curved left around a tight bend ten feet up and met at a long landing. The proper front door of the apartment was off the off yellow of old white paint. Tar stains followed the crown molding along the ceiling and he quietly rejoiced in the prospect of smoking indoors.

The door really did stick— the bottom of it dragging a rip through the dust on the floor. Other than the obvious lack of upkeep, the inside was pretty unremarkable. It smelled how he assumed every home in Derry must’ve smelled. That sort of watery sulfur smell, old pipes, and plumbing that went right back into the Kenduskeag.

Richie dragged his two suitcases up the stairs and tried not to think about it.

-

Around midnight that first night, the scent memory of the inside of Eddie’s house hit him like a train. Half way through a cigarette, between his knuckles, before his head reminded him that Myra Kaspbrak used to smoke the same kind. The nutty sweet smell of Pall Mall’s cheap tobacco blend, taking him immediately back to the squat and crowded house of the Kaspbrak family.

She hid smoking from Eddie for years before they both caught her out on the back porch one night. She pleaded with him to learn from her, like she had to ’suffer’ so he didn’t have to. Like some sort of self serving martyrdom.

Eddie and him snuck out on the roof that night and smoked half a pack before Eddie’d started to cry. Like the perfect air of his Mom had been popped for the first time— the first time he really realized that she had flaws.

From the outside it was so obvious what she was doing to Eddie, but pulling the rug out from under him after revenge smoking on his roof wouldn’t have helped. Who even knew if telling him would help, it wasn’t like he could emancipate himself or something. They were just fucking _kids_. If Eddie noticed Richie crying along, he didn’t mention it. 

Half a pack down, Richie threw the rest under the couch.

-

Three nights in, Bev called him (only one person knew where he was, he expected a little kickback from at least someone). It felt a lot like they were waiting on him to reach out, which means they must have forgotten how he gets about shit like this. It did make him realize that he’d just assumed Bev would tell the others. Maybe she hadn’t.

The prospect of talking to anyone made him worry he’d have to explain what he’d been doing for the past two days. He’d spent all the daylight hours starting out his window, like he thought seeing a leaf blowing in the wind would send him through a full body flashback. Derry was holding out on him, she had all his memories in her grimy little hands. Derry looked a lot like Myra Kaspbrak in his minds eye (Bev wouldn’t want to hear all this, he told himself, she had enough to worry about with her impending divorce).

He could hear Ben over her shoulder when he finally picked up, ”_Good-morning Vietnam!_” A week earlier, hearing them both laugh might have made him cry, but at the moment it just felt nice. 

”You’re not far off you know, this place sucks.” Richie said it knowing that if she were here she’d smack at him. 

A muffled ’beep beep, Rich’ came from Ben, and if he was really committed to the joke— he’d have hung up. But he missed them already. 

For a while he really just listened, as the other two told him about the house boat they were looking at. Out on the west coast, somewhere up in a lake in Washington. Ben’s voice occasionally overlapping hers to talk about the minimalistic architecture of compact living.

For about an hour they didn’t talk about anything to do with Derry and it was surprising how nice it was.

“So— hear anything?” she sounded like she was smiling, but they both knew neither of them wanted to hear any of it. 

“Nah, but know you’re the first one I’d call if I ever see a clown again,” they laughed for a little. 

Ben briefly jumped on speaker to mention that Mike wanted to start a group chat and that Richie should make a Facebook already. The idea sounded nice, but communicating at the moment felt a little too hard (especially if said communicating had him making a Facebook account).

Like his mouth didn’t fucking work right— the filter from his brain to his mouth unable to yell anything other than _we left him down there—_

“Are you going to tell me why you really moved back? ‘Cause I know it wasn’t the local tourism destinations.”

Last night he’d finally let himself think about Eddie in a solid way again. He’d kept it off for three days, but last night he drove out to the kissing bridge and probably sat at the roadside for two hours before the chill made him crawl home with his tail between his legs. 

“Nah, I just think I needed a little quiet after... well everything.” It didn’t sound very convincing, but she let him have it. “And you know Derry, nothing happens up here.” The joke fell a little flat when she didn’t laugh back but he figured he deserved it.

”Well, let us know when you’ve got the new place all pretty and we’ll visit.”

“You want to visit?” Even after everything they’d been through, it still felt too genuine so hey came back with a cheap joke about them missing ‘little Richie Trashmouth’. 

She took a breath to probably correct him, but with the sound of her hand over the receiver, Ben must have said something at a distance. 

“Richie— please keep in touch, I gotta go.” He shot back a quick goodbye and thunked the phone down in his pajama clad lap. 

It didn’t occur to him till much later that he hadn’t asked if Ben knew. Bev was good, he trusted her not to tell. If there was anything good that came out of this shitty town it was Bev. She was good. ’N so was Ben and Mike and Bill and Stan and Eds—

That night for dinner he ate pasta without anything on it and that at least made him laugh.

-

Seeing it now, after the fight was all over, it was obvious Eddie was dead. But watching himself panic and try to talk him awake— from an outsider’s perspective, he was surprised he hadn’t tried to smack him across the face. That’s what everyone seemed to do in the films. Richie was watching the whole of the Losers cluster around Eddie’s body, from behind one of the black glisening spikes under the diminishing deadlights. The sound of them over his head was deafening— but some cruel fate had him still able to hear his own voice over top of Eddie.

He’d wrapped his jacket around the stump that used to be Eddie’s right arm— imagery of his cast flashing through his head only seemed to make him shake more. He wasn’t responding, but he swore he felt his leg twitch against his. He wasn’t gone, they still had time.

“C’mon spaghetti man—”

Bev said something really fucking sad over his shoulder, but he didn’t listen. It seemed like every time he looked back down at the blood oozing down Eds’ side he remembered something small and insignificant from their childhood. Richie had Eddie’s face in his hands, shaking him— pinching his cheek like he’d jump up and tell Richie to stop treating him like a kid any second.

The growing rumbling of the cave surrounding them suddenly sounded so loud, drowning out the deadlights. Richie tried to step out from behind the spike and rush forward, but his feet had fuzed with the ground.

Bill had one hand on his shoulder and the other on his his, to pull him up and off of Eddie. At the time, he must have thought it was his last chance, but looking on Richie knew he must have genuinely thought it’d work. Just like Ben did when they were kids. He’d wake up— he had to.

He’d grabbed Eddie’s face, unmoving in his hands and pressed an uncomfortable kiss to his mouth. He couldn’t remember the sensation, but some mean voice in his head said that it’d been cold. Bev was crying louder over his shoulder and Bill must have gotten Mike and Ben in on it cause then there were more hands on him and they were dragging him away from Eddie.

Richie grabbed ahold of his ankle all the while screaming everything he could think of. At the lip of the cave he remembers the moment he knew he was losing hold cause he started to scream louder. The rest of the loser’s club dragged him out of the cave— his flailing arm catching on a rising rock, ripping a line up through his shoulder—

Richie shot up in bed soaked through like a rag with sweat to the sound of someone ringing his doorbell. It had been seven days since they killed the clown, five since he’d moved back to Derry, and zero since he’d had a good night’s sleep.

The doorbell rang three times in quick succession, probably the first time someone had rang in it years. Pulling his arms stiffly through a flannel he shouted something rude as he shuffled out the door and down the stairs. The first step around the curve had a dip in the middle that he knew would trip him up later.

The frosted window on the upper half of the door cut through with the shadow of a person. Very useful— he was so glad his eyes still worked so he could work these things out.

“Alright— alright,” Richie pulled the door open fast and stared from their feet up.

It was Eddie Kaspbrak.

When they met eyes, both of them seemed to move in synch— opening their mouths, not stepping forward, and kind of just staring. The only obvious sign that this was at least an accurate prank was the open spot at his side where Eddie’s right arm used to be.

“Oh— good to see you Eds,” Richie just had enough thought of mind to turn away from Eddie before throwing up at his feet.


End file.
